The Announcement | Raleigh to Melbourne

My husband and I announced that we were moving to Melbourne, Australia when actually, we just moved back in with our parents during a pandemic.

Ouch.

It’s the truth. Here is the photo that we posted earlier this year with the following announcement:

“Here it is! Our big, big news! Our time in Raleigh is coming to an end – we are moving across the world to MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA! 🇦🇺

So why are we moving? Honestly we have loved our time in Raleigh. We went to college here (Go Pack!), met some amazing friends, worked with inspiring people, fell in love and got married, and have enjoyed eating, playing, and living the downtown Raleigh lifestyle for the past 5+ years. However, Sean has received the opportunity of a lifetime with his company so we are uprooting our lives and taking the leap! Because, why not?! ✈️

We are crazy excited (if you can’t tell) but are sure at times it will be uncomfortable. Moving to another country has involved a whole new world of visas, processes, hard decisions, and even harder goodbyes. The fires in Australia are also adding some unexpected concern 🔥

So there you have it! Things are going to start moving rather quickly from here on out. We are leaving next week to explore Melbourne and to find a place to live, afterwards I will return to work with my last day being February 7th, and then we are leaving Raleigh on February 15th. 🏙

With all of this being said, if you have any connections over there, we would be so grateful for an intro! Knowing next to no one in a whole new country is daunting for sure.

Farewell mates! 👋 We are excited to share this journey with you and hope that you can come visit us.”

That’s when we thought that the fires in Australia were going to be our biggest concern.

Our date to leave our home in Raleigh was driven by our lease terms on our apartment. It was slated to end December 2019 so we explained our situation to our landlord and we tried to push out the end date as far as possible. Since the landlord was listing our unit to sell after we moved out, we could only get our lease extended until February 15th at the latest. We had to decide on taking the biggest leap of faith that we have taken yet! After we moved out of our apartment, we thought that we would be staying with family here and there and traveling for Sean’s work with the move to Melbourne being sometime in March at the latest.

Then BOOM! We learned that there had been a delay in submitting our visas which would push the timeline back at least by another month (April) and then we found ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic, quarantined and practicing social distancing at my parent’s house.

So here we are 2 months later with May quickly approaching and we are still living back at home with our parents.

This situation has been less than ideal however, there are some positives about not making the move just yet:

• We have been spending quality time with family before we move halfway across the world.
• Trying to learn the lay of the land in Melbourne during this pandemic would have surely been difficult and it would not have started our experience off on a very positive note. We are grateful to be in a place that is familiar to us during such an unfamiliar time.
• We are not planning on having a car while living in Australia. It would have potentially been difficult for us to get around a new city while practicing social distancing.
• Arriving while many businesses are closed and spending time in quarantine would feel like we were wasting our work visa time. One of the huge selling points of living in Australia is the opportunity to submerge ourselves in another culture and to travel throughout the country and that side of the world. Going over there just to stay at home would have been a huge disappointment.

What have we learned:

• That you really do not need many material possessions to survive and thrive. All of our belongings are currently in storage aside from the contents of our suitcases, our laptops, and a few good books.
• We will buy bikes ASAP after our move to have another mode of transportation other than the tram in case there is ever a situation where we would not be able to commute on the tram.
• What it feels like to be in a less than ideal situation and to make the most of it.
• The importance of patience and a positive attitude.

Hope for the future is power in the present.

Les Brown

I am aware that it is pretty normal to wind down commitments and to live with family or a friend temporarily before an international move. I also knew to expect some delays (big changes like this often take longer to execute than planned). With the addition of the coronavirus pandemic, it has certainly added some further delays, complications, and an immense feeling of living in limbo. You can say that we have had some bad timing for sure! Looking forward to the future with hope and faith that we will get to live out our dream lifestyle keeps us going.

What can you look forward to? I am excited to continue to share updates as well as some posts about the steps that it takes to move to another country, stories from others who are living an “expat lifestyle”, recommendations for how to make the transition as smooth as possible, and more!